Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna… Can you hear it? Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna… It is guiding you. Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna… Will you follow?

I play some songs with complex, contemporary classical fingerwork and singing. One thing that helps a lot, if you can swing it, is to write down both the guitar and vocals in notation. Then, you can see exactly when each part should be doing what in relation to each other part.

That way, you learn the song as one unit, rather than the singing and the guitar playing as separate songs which you have to combine on the fly.

Actually, if you can't read music, I suppose you could do the same thing with tablature. Worth a go, no?

Sorry, but I have to post this.

Ya but Belew is a freak. :D

I was thinking Dave Mathews as someone who's obviously spent a ton of time practicing this kind of thing.

If I would like to practise in the most effective way. Would it be more positive to play when not watching the instrument? So you can see/feel the piano/guitar in your mind. So you can focuse more on the rythm and interpretation instead of what chord comes next. When watching the instrument it becomes easier to rely on the visual playing and not through the ear. But when you play when not seing the frets/keys doesn't it get easyer to inprint the fretboars/keyboard in to both your muscle memory and your mind.

One of my fave ways to practice when I was younger was while watching television. There's two benefits to this. During the actual show/movie your mind is going to wander away from the instrument and your muscle instincts end up taking over. And then during commercials I'd try to play along to whatever lame music came on which forced me out of my comfort zone.

Try it.